five nines

jargon

ops cultureISP & telecom

99.999% availability - about five minutes of downtime allowed per year.

The classic telecom gold standard. Each added nine costs roughly ten times more than the last: four nines is under an hour of downtime a year, five is minutes, six is seconds. The honest question is never whether you can hit five nines, but which failures the users actually feel.

Also known as: 99.999%, five 9s

All glossary entries